Arvada Shooting Mess

[Suvorov]

I keep a rifle in a state of readiness in the safe, but I would not expect to ever actually be using it unless the situation has degraded to the point where police probably are not going to be responding anytime soon.

I would think that use of a rifle in a home defense scenario would be a *little* less ambiguous to responding LE. Then again there is the Sutherland Springs incident. I still would not hesitate to use a long gun in defense of house.

I have very limited LE training but in my military life so much emphasis was placed on preventing friendly fire because it was so big a threat and virtually none of those safeguards exist in a mass shooting event. I appreciate BB’s and Trooper’s sage advice as it may help those on this forum but in the end I guess everyone who carries a gun “pays their money and takes their chances.”

The only people who won here were those who would have been killed by the bad guy and the Bloomberg/Giffords cabal.

[wvincent]

It depends. If you are in a stampede of humanity or are surrounded by the Looky-Lou squad, if you ground your gun it may disappear. I've seen that happen, even off corpses, in certain neighborhoods.

We had a guy shoot a pawn shop robber, then field strip his gun and set it on the counter before police arrived. We've had guys holster up. We've had guys take it to their car and lock it in the trunk (this will, most likely, result in your car being the subject of a search warrant if the bad guy dies, maybe just a consent search if he doesn't just as an FYI), etc.

The most important thing is not in your hand and FFS don't reach for it. I've seen so many people reach for it when asked "do you have a gun?" or the like because in their mind they want to show it and be helpful. Don't. It's common enough we're now trained to say "without reaching for it, do you have any weapons on you" and people *still* do it.

Which leads me to this. If you may be surrounded by a not so friendly crowd, which could lead to another shooting if Just-been-shot dudes friends or relatives take umbrage at your actions, is risk/reward vs securing/not securing the shooters weapon going to be a viable option?

The only thing I really want in my hands when LE arrives is my Dark Angel trauma kit, and maybe my phone, but really not thrilled at the prospect of getting shot in the head by some bestie or cousin with a street shooting pick-up.

Maybe recruit someone who's with me to just go stand on it?

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Not being a police officer but being a cognitive psychologist with a specialization in visual perception, I would want NOTHING in my hands when the police arrive. The principle that perception is a constructive act is not to be fooled with. Diallo's wallet and guys with cells phones come to mind. Open hands!! Items in hands are threats.

As a civilian, in a FOF exercise with police, I was 'shot' standing there with my hands up because I 'moved'. At the NTI, in a courthouse terrorist attack, when I managed to get a terrorist's gun, shot said person and heard the police arrive, I ditched the gun. Now the whistle had blown to stop, so I really didn't have to worry about what happened to the grounded gun.

Holding a long gun is so atypical, easier to spot because of its physical characteristics in a parsing of the scene, it is making you 'pop out' - a psychophysical term when a scene is scanned by fast parallel processing visual systems and you are the 'target'.

For your hands, if you look at pictorial inventories (must have one somewhere), of harmless objects in the hands of folks that were mistakenly shot, you would see the point.

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That horizontal cross piece is known as a visual primitive and detected quickly and in parallel in a crowd.

[Erick Gelhaus]

And, I just got a call asking that I discuss this whole thing tomorrow in a CCW skillz class I'm doing.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Expect the discussion, if not guided, to descend into a person being a moral failure if one, as a civilian, does not intervene. Then, the police should know that I am a good person as I am saying that! Or they should be better trained to see that I am a good person. Heard that in gun classes.

Obviously, the issue is more complicated that the cliches. I'll pass on the lecture about pro-social behavior from my senior seminar on such.

[HCM]

I would think that use of a rifle in a home defense scenario would be a *little* less ambiguous to responding LE. Then again there is the Sutherland Springs incident. I still would not hesitate to use a long gun in defense of house.

I have very limited LE training but in my military life so much emphasis was placed on preventing friendly fire because it was so big a threat and virtually none of those safeguards exist in a mass shooting event. I appreciate BB’s and Trooper’s sage advice as it may help those on this forum but in the end I guess everyone who carries a gun “pays their money and takes their chances.”

The only people who won here were those who would have been killed by the bad guy and the Bloomberg/Giffords cabal.

First, in the Sutherland springs situation occurred in a small town in rural TX, Mr. Willeford responded, engaged the suspect and then both were mobile and departed the scene before county or state LE arrived which was fortuitous for Mr. Willeford.

Second, location and culture matter. In Texas in general, and rural Texas in particular, LE is attuned to the fact that regular people have guns and gun doesn't automatically = bad guy.

In other parts of the country there is often a presumption that only bad guys and cops have guns and if you are not immediately perceived as a cop it will be assumed you are a threat. IME this is particularly bad among those from NorthEast urban areas

Some of this is cultural and some is an artifact of academy training programs, in fact it could well be it's own discussion.

Another factor is what do you look like ? Race, how you dress and carry yourself etc can make a difference.

Another personal example: OPD Detective William Wilkins, a black detective working a plainclothes narcotics assignment (ergo trying to not look like a cop) was shot and killed by two rookie uniformed officers while holding a vehicle theft suspect at gunpoint. The other factor here is making sure you understand no one magically knows you are a "good guy" in plain clothes and having space in your head to remember that "don't move" and "drop the gun" applies to you. Det Wilikins was an Academy classmate of my long time partner on a state task force. As it was related to me, Wilkins was holding the suspect at gun point, the uniformed officers approached from behind him and ordered him not to move but he turned with gun in hand.

https://www.odmp.org/officer/15494-d...lberto-wilkins

[BehindBlueI's]

Which leads me to this. If you may be surrounded by a not so friendly crowd, which could lead to another shooting if Just-been-shot dudes friends or relatives take umbrage at your actions, is risk/reward vs securing/not securing the shooters weapon going to be a viable option?

The only thing I really want in my hands when LE arrives is my Dark Angel trauma kit, and maybe my phone, but really not thrilled at the prospect of getting shot in the head by some bestie or cousin with a street shooting pick-up.

Maybe recruit someone who's with me to just go stand on it?

Can you leave? Can you tell 911 that the crowd is threatening your life and you will meet officers at X location?

As Glenn mentioned, nothing in hand is best.

For off duty officers, badge around neck is much better than badge on belt.

[HCM]

Which leads me to this. If you may be surrounded by a not so friendly crowd, which could lead to another shooting if Just-been-shot dudes friends or relatives take umbrage at your actions, is risk/reward vs securing/not securing the shooters weapon going to be a viable option?

The only thing I really want in my hands when LE arrives is my Dark Angel trauma kit, and maybe my phone, but really not thrilled at the prospect of getting shot in the head by some bestie or cousin with a street shooting pick-up.

Maybe recruit someone who's with me to just go stand on it?

Glen E Meyer did a great job explaining why you want nothing in your hands when officers arrive.

You can what if shit to death and the scenario you bring up is possible in a self defense situation (in which case beating feet is both reasonable and prudent a la the Kenosha hid) but quite unlikely in a mass shooting situation - given mass shootings are the subject of the OP it's best to limit this to mass shooting related lines.

Re: Your trauma kit. It's likely you only have one so remember the priority of life scale. For LE it's Citizens/innocents, LE, Badguys. For a private party is could well be argued that its: you & your family/ friends, innocent 3rd parties/strangers, and again Badguys last.

Badguys are always last because the situation is the result of what they did or failed to do ergo it's their fault.

Plus badguys don't get treated till they are cuffed / secured even if they appear dead. As someone trained and experienced in handcuffing violent people, my training and experience tells me if I have cuffs I'm probably not going up to cuff them by myself after I just shot them. As the recent Phoenix PD Child hostage / patrol rifle shooting shows, there are exceptions to everything. Maybe if I need to cuff them so I can render aid to someone else, but not them, they're not worth the risk.

[Oldherkpilot]

Right.
Is holstering preferred over grounding my gun and stepping away to look fat, dumb, and happy?

Now we have two guns laying around.😁

[Trooper224]

Not being a police officer but being a cognitive psychologist with a specialization in visual perception, I would want NOTHING in my hands when the police arrive. The principle that perception is a constructive act is not to be fooled with. Diallo's wallet and guys with cells phones come to mind. Open hands!! Items in hands are threats.

As a civilian, in a FOF exercise with police, I was 'shot' standing there with my hands up because I 'moved'. At the NTI, in a courthouse terrorist attack, when I managed to get a terrorist's gun, shot said person and heard the police arrive, I ditched the gun. Now the whistle had blown to stop, so I really didn't have to worry about what happened to the grounded gun.

Holding a long gun is so atypical, easier to spot because of its physical characteristics in a parsing of the scene, it is making you 'pop out' - a psychophysical term when a scene is scanned by fast parallel processing visual systems and you are the 'target'.

For your hands, if you look at pictorial inventories (must have one somewhere), of harmless objects in the hands of folks that were mistakenly shot, you would see the point.

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That horizontal cross piece is known as a visual primitive and detected quickly and in parallel in a crowd.

Not only hands. This is why I specifically mentioned taking a seat. A gun in your hand identifies you as a possible threat to responding LE. If you're on your feet you're active and viewed as a possible threat. Holster, sit down and keep your hands visible. We can spend all day spinning this off into all kinds of possible scenarios. However, most people have never held someone at gunpoint, let alone participated in a gunfight. This is one of those situations where the KISS principle can be the difference between being a hero or a zero.